Camel Wants To Give Hipsters Cancer With Brooklyn-Branded
Cigarettes

Showing just how much they have their fingers on the pulse of 2006, the folks at Camel have decided to come out with packaging for their cigarettes that tries to cash in on the hipster cachet of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood.

It’s about last call, a sloppy kiss goodbye and a solo saunter to a rock show in an abandoned building… It’s where a tree grows.

“It’s known as a hipster neighborhood,” a corporate shill tells the Brooklyn Paper. “We’ve found the temperament of what Williamsburg stands for, and its artistic approach to life, meshes with the Camel brand.”

We wonder if Camel will also go for hipster-oriented warning labels on their packaging, like “You will die younger, so you might as well spend all your trust fund now” or “Smoking is a total turn-off to that hot vegan chick who lives in Bushwick.”

I’d say return or destroy the chantix. Friend of mine tried it, he went completely bat shit crazy. Shot his dog, burned down half his house and totaled his car. 3 days after he was off the drug he couldn’t remember doing any of it.

Love your handle, don’t quit that. I quit with a combination of wellbutrin and the patch. The patch was disgusting, bad dreams, etc. I’m still on the wellbutrin because as my doctor said at the time, eh, you’re almost 40, you might need it. I smoked here and there after I had “quit” but one time after a “social smoke”, I was so disgusted, that was it for me. (I used to love smoking).

Chantix made a friend of mine’s husband go a little loopy, so if you have someone to keep an eye on you in case your moods shift or you hallucinate (both of which happened to him), that might be good. Also, I highly recommend taking up some kind of hobby to keep your hands busy — drawing, writing, knitting, sculpting, anything to fiddle with when the urge to smoke hits you.

I kicked a 30 year habit – and over the years, I had tried every damn thing. When I quit, I finally did it cold turkey. I had gotten sick with a bad respiratory infection, and I had a terrible moment one night where I was granted a vision of what my life was going to be like, full time, in another 20 or 30 years. I can only tell you that you reach a point where you will be very glad you did this, and the people who love you will, too. By the way, I never had the side effects for Chantix, but Wellbutrin seemed to work better for me – but at some point, you just have to stop without a substitute. There is no magic, except the magic inside you to get to the sticking point. It’s trite as hell, but nothing works unless you really want to stop. Keep trying, you will get there.

I’ve never smoked, but my mom, a pack-a-day smoker for more than 30 years, quit cold with Wellbutrin. Her twin sister tried the same approach, it didn’t work for her. I think mindset has a HUGE amount of influence on success. My aunt went into it thinking the pills would do all the work. My mom seemed to go into it knowing it would still be a war. But she’d tried EVERYTHING over the years.

I can remember when I was a kid, she’d give me her cigarettes and tell me to hide them, to not give them back no matter what she said. The fact that she did that instead of throwing them away NOW tells me she was never going to succeed with that approach. Back then, I just thought it was fun having that kind of power :)

I’ve heard several people have used the e-cigarette, basically a vaporizer. You control the nicotine so you can back off at your pace, you stop inhaling carcinogens immediately, you’re still doing the oral fixation so you don’t gain weight and, since it’s not smoking, you can legally ‘smoke’ inside. The price for the system varies from model to model but is generally the price of one or two cartons. Again, I don’t smoke, so this is second-hand information. You might want to try it, all the cool kids are doing it.

I live in Williamsburg, and my friends and I would sure like to hear about where to get one of these “trust funds.” I believe these are more prevalent among young Americans in the UES and UWS (and now sadly the LES), and among young Europeans in general.

I’d suggest finding someone who looks absolutely awful, like their parents dress them in a way to display that they’re “special” children so others aren’t caught off guard, and asking them. Particularly if they’ve got full cases of unwarranted self-importance and Pabst.